If God exists, then I do not, since omniscience and omnipotence prevent the existence of independent agents. If god controls all aspects of everything we're all just pieces of God. As such, God cannot persuade me he exists since his existence and mine are mutually exclusive.
That assumes an omnipotent and omniscient god, however. Not all deities of all religions are both, or either.
And arguments in relation to gods which are not AT least omnipotent or omniscient are pointless, since if you aren't one of those then you aren't sufficiently different from normal life to be interesting. It's like having a special word for whether or not you believe the longest snake is bigger than 45 feet. It's not interesting enough to have a special philosophy around it. Give me a laser pointer, a pointy hat and a flamethower and I'd probably be able to persuade ancient greece that I am Zeus, and a god, but that doesn't make me one.
'God' is omnipotent and omniscient, or not God. If a being exists which knows everything, and can do anything, then I only exist as a pre-engineered set of states which God has allowed to exist. I am thus not an independent actor, and only exist in God's mind.
I don't believe that an omniscient and omnipotent 'God' prevents the possibility of free will, the ability to control anything doesn't necessitate you control everything. By being all powerful and all knowing, 'God' should have the ability to grant you free will while still maintaining the criteria of being 'God'.
However requiring 'God' to be omnipotent and omniscient does shoehorn your 'God' into being at best, indifferent and uncaring towards the populace due to his inaction of peoples suffering/plight.
Either 'God' is omnipotent/niscient, and purposefully choose to inflict trials upon people regardless of the pain/cost it causes them, even though 'God' has the means of doing so without. Or 'God' is not omni.
Or you haven't studied Christian theology sufficiently. This is a very old question and you arent even adressing answers to it.
To start with, what measure of good are you using?
Is free will sufficiently good, or does it lead to sufficient good, that the world is better with it and god sitting back (or maybe playing Futurama's game)?
Personally believe, if you allow any form of suffering you can no longer be considered omni. You should have the ability to prevent it from happening in a way that maintains free/forcing your will on them.
If you are willfully allowing suffering to happen to someone, when you have the ability to prevent it, that is not "good".
If you have the ability to prevent suffering but choose not to do so because of a disagreement of beliefs with that person, that is not "good".
Going off the Bender example, he wasn't omnipotent, he was simply stronger than his inhabitants. He wasn't omniscient, he simply had a birds eye view of his top half (he couldn't even see the people on his back). In that case, his decision to maintain his aloofness makes sense, as he was incapable of making changes without it affecting someone else negatively. I wouldn't call his decision to abstain, "good", either though.
If Bender were omni, he could have found a way to solve both sides disputes without impacting the other. I don't remember all of the issues in the episode, but going off the big "war" one. He could have simply created another "planet/body" for the other side to live on. Both sides no longer have to deal with each other, no side was impacted etc. This is obviously flawed down to the level of, what about people interacting between the two sides that didn't hate each other and can no longer see each other, etc. But hey, I'm not omni. :P
Counterpoint: Goods can be in conflict. If we consider personal growth a good, your war example actually works against it.
I agree.
Which brings my point of, if you cannot find a way to solve the issue without impacting one side you cannot be considered omnipotent/omniscient or are willfully choosing to do nothing even though you have the ability, which I would find morally questionable.
e:
Why do I need to completly quantify 'good' for this, I can use the basics of allowing the following obvious choices and it fails;
Murder, Torture, Abuse, Rape
Can a person who has never been sad know happiness?
Can a person who can never choose evil choose good
In an Abrahamic stance...
Does imago dei necessitate free will?
God is omnibenificent. . .
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
agnosticism is a knowledge claim and lies in the field of epistemology
it is not a position that is anywhere on the spectrum of atheism to theism
the layman's interpretation is a grid approach
agnostic theist (most people are; "i have no personal knowledge there's a god, but i believe in one or more"
agnostic atheist (most atheists are; "i have no personal knowledge that there's not a god, but i believe there are none"
gnostic theist (a small number of people are ; "i have personal experience of 1 or more gods, so of course i 'believe' in it/them"
gnostic atheist (nobody except teenagers; "i know there is no god")
This does considerable violence to epistemology (as well as common use, the layman is much more likely to view agnosticism as the middle way/position of doubt/uncertainty. Which is also the interpretation used by the philosophical literature, by and large.).
Basically, the idea that "knowing" requires an impossibility of being incorrect, or even "perfect certainty". We claim to know things about the universe based upon parsimony, plausibility, elegance, modesty etc... the question of deities is no different.
We know there is no god. We know that the imaginary friend about which I spoke as a child (Anty, an invisible but anthropomorphic ant that often hung out in my ear) does not exist.
I consider myself agnostic, and I tend to dislike it when people call me an atheist, even though my beliefs overlap far more with atheists than with theists. There's a quote by William L. Rowe: "In the popular sense of the term, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of God, while a theist believes that God exists, an atheist disbelieves in God." Practically speaking, there's essentially no difference between how my beliefs impact my overall view of the world and what is right and wrong, but I think that the distinction is nevertheless an important one. Theists and atheists both believe that the universe exists in a certain state - though obviously, they disagree about the nature of the state. As an agnostic, I take no position and claim no knowledge of the universe.
This is plainly, bad epistemology.
Either you are an atheist, because you acknowledge that the arguments for a god fail. Or you are a theist because you think they succeed. Or, you think that the arguments are arguments that you are unqualified to judge the validity of, or you think they are undetermined as to their validity and are thus, an agnostic.
Plainly, the arguments for theism fail, they are uniformly bad - so you would not be justified in being a theist or agnostic under those criteria.
The maintain agnosticism despite that is to carve a special epistemological exception without cause - usually, holding the evidence for a position to be an empirical question relating to facts, but for its rejection requiring proof. Which is not a workable epistemology - it is confusing synthetic and analytic propositions. And furthermore, it is inconsistent in that it is an exception granted only to deities.
I get this is how reason works but I don't think this is how humans work. Plus I've read Hume and who knows...maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow and maybe reason ain't reasonable (which would totally suck).
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
So, who would like to share in the reading of exerpts from a polarizing book that often uses inflammatory language & suggests with great hyperbole that Muslims are violent, crazy, dangerous people?
What, all of you?
Well then!
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
Chapter 1: Faith in Exile, Pages 11-12:
THE young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb. His pockets are filled with nails, ball bearings, and rat poison.
The bus is crowded and headed for the heart of the city. The young man takes his seat beside a middle-aged couple. He will wait for the bus to reach its next stop. The couple at his side appears to be shopping for a new refrigerator. The woman has decided on a model, but her husband worries that it will be too expensive. He indicates another one in a brochure that lies open on her lap. The next stop comes into view. The bus doors swing. The woman observes that the model her husband has selected will not fit in the space underneath their cabinets. New passengers have taken the last remaining seats and begun gathering in the aisle. The bus is now full. The young man smiles. With the press of a button he destroys himself, the couple at his side, and twenty others on the bus. The nails, ball bearings, and rat poison ensure further casualties on the street and in the surrounding cars. All has gone according to plan.
The young man's parents soon learn of his fate. Although saddened to have lost a son, they feel tremendous pride at his accomplishment. They know that he has gone to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow. He has also sent his victims to hell for eternity. It is a double victory. The neighbors find the event a great cause for celebration and honor the young man's parents by giving them gifts of food and money.
These are the facts. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Is there anything else that we can infer about him on the basis of his behavior? Was he popular in school? Was he rich or was he poor? Was he of low or high intelligence? His actions leave no clue at all. Did he have a college education? Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer? His behavior is simply mute on questions of this sort, and hundreds like them.
Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy—you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it-easy—to guess the young man's religion?
Well, let's start with 'these are the facts'. Which facts, belonging to which event? Harris provides two sources for this story, and neither of them point to a specific example of a suicide bombing. It's somewhat reminiscent of the bus scene from the film The Siege.
If a bomber is using rat poison and a lot of shrapnel, that far more fits the MO of an American fascist bomber (albeit those are rarely suicide bombers) than a Muslim, whom Harris is basically daring the reader to indict on his behalf (Jihadists tend to use specific bomb recipes known for their efficacy; these rarely include the use of toxins, which are known to gum-up explosive powers and lower blaster yields or even cause a bomb to fail entirely).
The line about parents gleefully hearing about their son's martyrdom is and having a celebratory BBQ is just wholesale bullshit.
And, of course, we do see one of Harris's most prominent MOs here - his insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence. Mr. Harris derives this thought from work done by Dr. Marc Sageman, which reached the conclusion that about 62%~ of Jihadists had university degrees and either a middle class or upper middle class lifestyle (this includes, of course, the late Mr. Bin Laden).
These are well educated, middle class people, yes - but they are often not religious radicals. They are political ideologues. The whole intent of the movement is to cultivate and maintain the idea of inseparable differences between the west and the Persian gulf, which (in their minds) will allow the Persian Gulf to find it's own destiny rather than be used as a pawn in perpetuity. It's not even a half-wrong thought process (though the method is clearly deplorable).
With Love and Courage
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
My first observation is that you mischaracterise that passage. Harris asks "Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer?" and answer is "His behavious is mute on this subject". From which it is difficult to derive the conclusion that Harris is insisting anything like " insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence".
My first observation is that you mischaracterise that passage. Harris asks "Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer?" and answer is "His behavious is mute on this subject". From which it is difficult to derive the conclusion that Harris is insisting anything like " insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence".
I feel that my characterization is fair within the context of the whole work, which goes into this quite a bit.
With Love and Courage
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
My first observation is that you mischaracterise that passage. Harris asks "Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer?" and answer is "His behavious is mute on this subject". From which it is difficult to derive the conclusion that Harris is insisting anything like " insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence".
I feel that my characterization is fair within the context of the whole work, which goes into this quite a bit.
Well, perhaps (I don't quite remember it that way).
But it is explicitly the opposite of what the passage actually says.
My first observation is that you mischaracterise that passage. Harris asks "Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer?" and answer is "His behavious is mute on this subject". From which it is difficult to derive the conclusion that Harris is insisting anything like " insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence".
I feel that my characterization is fair within the context of the whole work, which goes into this quite a bit.
This seems a bit unfair in the context of the thread since most probably haven't read more than your excerpt. It also seems like it might distract the thread from atheism in general to atheism in context of specific religions (which I can imagine getting weird.)
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Pascal's wager becomes ridiculous when your invert it though.
Say you look at it as if there were a devil rather than a god. If you believe in the devil you will likely be tortured to death for all eternity as the rules of sin are essentially inescapable. If you do not believe in him and choose to live your life as you would and he does exist, you likely are still going to be tortured for all eternity. Since there is no way to know the dogmatic rules we have in Christianity are, in fact, from a god rather than a devil, there is no way to know that the likelihood of Pascal's Wager is any different from Pascal's Damnation.
I actually think Pascal's Wager still holds under your Satanic inversion. You've essentially just added two additional options:
1. Satan exists, you believe in him
Outcome: Tortured in Hell
2. Satan does not exist, you do not believe in him
Outcome: Tortured in Hell
3. God exists, you believe in him
Outcome: Heaven!
4. God exists, you do not believe in him
Tortured in Hell
3 is still the best option!
It isn't, because this isn't the assumption here. In context, there are only two valid outcomes:
-death with no afterlife
-being tortured for all eternity
By believing in 3 you have to also rationally believe in 1. By believing in 1 your odds are far more likely to be tortured in hell for all eternity as there is no way to know god's will within context. The only (only) constant in the bible is that the devil is there and will tempt you. The odds of a good, all powerful, and benevolent Christian deity controlling all things are essentially 0% given the prevalence of and success of "evil" men, especially within the church that controls the word of god itself. Either the Christian god isn't a god at all or isn't benevolent given the amount of terrible things that happen to his followers on this earth.
This goes back to the Problem of Evil:
God exists.
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils.
An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence, and knows every way in which those evils could be prevented.
An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists.
Evil exists (logical contradiction).
There are only two likely outcomes here. Either there is a god and it is malevolent, or there are not gods.
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good. An omnibenevolent god would intervene (if it existed) to guide those with free will into choices of actions to prevent atrocities, rather than letting atrocities occur. If anything, free will is an argument for the existence of a malevolent god as it is the dogmatic direct cause of evil actions on earth. A benevolent god could have made positive actions easier or more karmicly rewarding to the faithful, but this is not the case in reality without assumption of a reward after death. Given that we cannot see that reward, nor prove that reward, nor see any likelihood that such a reward exists in any way shape or form it becomes essentially an empty promise as there is no reason that there shouldn't be confirmation of an afterlife in an existence in which a benevolent god actually exists. By leaving uncertainty, that actually creates more evil in the world as people fight over the nature of heaven and how best to get there, actively creating more evil through ambiguity.
Pascal's Wager is entirely about confirmation bias, you believe in something you want to believe, not in something with actual mathematical or logical certitude. And that's fine! Faith has a lot of roles and isn't something people shouldn't have or act by, there are a lot of good things within Christian dogma and the community.
But it isn't a logical outcome and we shouldn't try and pretend it is.
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good.
The existence of God or gods aside, this strikes me as an assertion that is as problematic as many theist assertions, and one that is grounded in belief of sorts rather than in verifiable fact. Or do you have any evidence for this? Unless you're only assigning everything that is bad to free will, which doesn't really convince IMO.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good.
The existence of God or gods aside, this strikes me as an assertion that is as problematic as many theist assertions, and one that is grounded in belief of sorts rather than in verifiable fact. Or do you have any evidence for this? Unless you're only assigning everything that is bad to free will, which doesn't really convince IMO.
Assuming human action is free of will, human action over time has created pretty much all of our horrors we've faced from war to petty crime. In the name of god more wars have been fought than over any other concept, which a benevolent god would interdict to prevent as his actions of revealing himself in the first place caused these conflicts. In such a situation the only positive action a god could take in a free will scenario is never revealing itself to exist in the first place, as if it were all knowing it would anticipate everything done in the face of religious conflict over the last 3000 years. Essentially, by introducing the idea of god to man a god would have created the majority of evil actions over time.
Enc on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Define free will. Contrast it with not having free will.
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good.
The existence of God or gods aside, this strikes me as an assertion that is as problematic as many theist assertions, and one that is grounded in belief of sorts rather than in verifiable fact. Or do you have any evidence for this? Unless you're only assigning everything that is bad to free will, which doesn't really convince IMO.
Assuming human action is free of will, human action over time has created pretty much all of our horrors we've faced from war to petty crime. In the name of god more wars have been fought than over any other concept, which a benevolent god would interdict to prevent as his actions of revealing himself in the first place caused these conflicts. In such a situation the only positive action a god could take in a free will scenario is never revealing itself to exist in the first place, as if it were all knowing it would anticipate everything done in the face of religious conflict over the last 3000 years. Essentially, by introducing the idea of god to man a god would have created the majority of evil actions over time.
No, you're assuming your conclusion as a premise.
Free will also leads to goods. You have offered no reasoning why the evils outweigh these, or why that is the framework by which god judges it.
This is why I keep saying you have to start by nailing down what is good. You can't make meaningful conclusions like this otherwise.
Another question: Assume god acts for a reason. What reason is there to create a perfect universe, where everything always ends happily and no actions ever matter? Is such a universe compatiple with free will if the outcome of all actions are the same?
Enc:
You can turn that around, though; pretty much all the good we've faced stems from free will, if there is such a thing. Saying that more bad than good has followed is a very strong assertion and needs strong evidence too.
On the question of benevolence and evil in the world: what is deemed good or evil from our perspective needn't necessarily be so from another perspective. There are many things that seem to us the best or worst thing ever as we experience them, yet later we see them as mere bumps. If there is a god and if there are other planes of existence (e.g. the afterlife, Paradise, Nirvana), I can imagine (which isn't the same as saying I believe it) that what seems horrific and evil to us in this life may not in another. Even if that were true, though, I don't think it justifies a laissez-faire attitude to war, torture, persecution, rape, murder etc. while we're here, but it's still the reason why I don't find the Problem of Evil argument particularly convincing. It says "If there is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God..." without considering that Evil may look different from such a god's perspective.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
In the name of god more wars have been fought than over any other concept, which a benevolent god would interdict to prevent as his actions of revealing himself in the first place caused these conflicts.
To be a devil's advocate...
I would contend that saying Religions have especially caused more wars than any other thing is not completely true. It is perhaps an aggravating cause, or something used to justify acts ex post facto, but I don't agree that its the igniting cause most of the time. Fighting in the name of god I would even argue is something that is inevitable when speaking about the pre-modern era. People conceptualized the entire world in a very different way than our modern way of thinking. God was involved in all aspects of the world and was inseparable from it, and I would argue that that is different from someone saying 'we must kill them because they are not our religion'. I think monotheistic religion is most guilty of giving humanity an extremely potent source of 'othering' other humans. But I think this religion as the root of all wars sort of thing is an atheistic shibboleth that really misunderstands how pre-modern people experienced the world.
Its oversimplifying pagan beliefs considerably to just say Zeus' only feature is that he makes thunder and lightning. His Roman name, Jupiter, literally means Father God (Deus pater). Lightning is an aspect of Zeus, something that emanates in Nature, but he is still a powerful god in the Pantheon. Perhaps not Omnipotent, but I'm not sure such a concept even existed in pagan religion. I'm seeing this odd religious version of Whiggish history being implied here, mankind hasn't been slowly building its way from pantheism to polytheism to monotheism to scientific enlightenment. The omni-suffix thing is largely regulated to Yahweh, I don't see why that should be exclusively be the sort of God we get to talk about. For instance, there's the Brahman of the Hindu cosmology, the ultimate principle, "It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes." [wikipedia] Is this concept not god because it is not unified in a singular 'person' as Yahweh is? If we should discard every other non-Abrahamic conception of god or gods, perhaps it is better these two stances be called Yahwehism and Anti-Yahwehism. I think our conversations of Theism/Atheism are so steeped in Monotheistic and Scientific Materialist assumptions about how god works that it does an injustice to 1/4 of the population of this planet (and pre-abrahamic peoples).They don't even enter into the argument due to their beliefs not fitting into the extremes of both positions neatly.
The neoplatonist Porphory wrote about the Christians saying: "How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?"
will continue this later maybe
That's part of why I think that the "god"-like words have only little stable content outside of their own contexts. The most stable part of them when used outside of myths, in comparisons or meta-talk, is the expression of being impressed.
It's not a distinction always worth making. And there's not always a reason to treat them as a group with collective validity or whatever. An argument about general "gods" is about a lot of things. A lot of shapes to push into a square hole at the same time.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
In the "Hi, I'm Jesus"-scenario, I suppose I'll be impressed if he shows me some simple party-tricks with his powers. I don't think that defining what's special enough for the prestigious "god"-title is actually worth doing.
If he turns playing-cards into doves, I'll wonder how he did it, but I'll accept that he can make doves appear.
That's a Gob, not a God.
But where did the lighter fluid come from?
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
edited September 2015
Before we dive into this deeper, lets keep in mind I am talking about the thesis of Pascal's Wager, not existence as a whole or if there is a god/divinity/nirvana/afterlife/et al. That is a different argument, and one I'm not going to discuss since it is essentially unknowable and unsolvable.
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good.
The existence of God or gods aside, this strikes me as an assertion that is as problematic as many theist assertions, and one that is grounded in belief of sorts rather than in verifiable fact. Or do you have any evidence for this? Unless you're only assigning everything that is bad to free will, which doesn't really convince IMO.
Looking at this through the lens of Pascal's Wager, the only way evil can exist is from free will, therefore it would be by default. Assuming an all powerful god with omnibenevolent ends that created the universe, enabling the existence of evil actions through free will would be the only way to introduce evil into said universe. An omnibenevolent god would not do such as it would cause it's creation's suffering. Or it is not omnibenevolent. If it is not omnibenevolent, why assume by default that a heaven awaits you or that you can somehow know what mortal actions will get you there. Such a conjecture would be meaningless as there is no way to know.
Edit: There is also the assumption that an omnipowerful and omnibelevolent god could not come up with a universe in which both free will and universally positive, but different, outcomes which is flawed as then such a god would not be omnipowerful.
Another question: Assume god acts for a reason. What reason is there to create a perfect universe, where everything always ends happily and no actions ever matter? Is such a universe compatiple with free will if the outcome of all actions are the same?
There could be any number of reasons, most likely unknowable by mortal minds in religious contexts. Pascal's Wager assumes that there is one, single path that makes you good in God's eyes and therefore the safe bet is to follow it, but assuming free will and a universe created in which free will can lead to evil actions there is not more reason to assume that following the assumed god's path will make you blessed and to an afterlife than being a horrible, mass murderer as there is no way to verify and, but the existence of such options, it is clear that the diety either does not view evil in the same terms as the written scripture of Christian dogma (which is what Pascal's Wager is based on), or if it does follow those rules there is such evidence of tampering with the text that passes along those beliefs (along with such splits and variations in them both in the current texts and over time), that there is no way to know which path among the contradictions is accurate. Given that the assumption of living a non-proper life is hell or purgatory, the odds of ending up in either are significantly higher than following any single path (and as they are almost all exclusionary between Abrahamic faiths, the odds are even less if you try and follow a hybrid).
On the question of benevolence and evil in the world: what is deemed good or evil from our perspective needn't necessarily be so from another perspective. There are many things that seem to us the best or worst thing ever as we experience them, yet later we see them as mere bumps. If there is a god and if there are other planes of existence (e.g. the afterlife, Paradise, Nirvana), I can imagine (which isn't the same as saying I believe it) that what seems horrific and evil to us in this life may not in another. Even if that were true, though, I don't think it justifies a laissez-faire attitude to war, torture, persecution, rape, murder etc. while we're here, but it's still the reason why I don't find the Problem of Evil argument particularly convincing. It says "If there is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God..." without considering that Evil may look different from such a god's perspective.
If evil is not as defined in the Christian bible, Pascal's Wager is even more meaningless as Heaven might as a reward might just as well be Hell from our perspective.
Again, let's not conflate existence or need for faith, religion, or gods as a whole with what I'm talking about here. I personally do have faith and am not an atheist. This is a discussion of the inanity of Pascal's Wager in context of how it is framed, not religion/faith/spiritualism/whatever as a whole. This is also not an argument to do whatever you want and murder folk because statistically speaking whatever. Only that the assumption that you have a "safe bet" in following a specific faith is silly and by it's own context deeply flawed.
Man, I don't believe in God and I'm not sure free will exists.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
The long and short of things are: Be excellent to each other, have a good time, leave the place better than how you found it, and try to do no harm (or, barring that, as little harm as you can).
If that involves some incense, traditional movements/rituals, calling upon ancestral spirits, or any number of other things good on ya. Or not! Either is good and groovy.
So I think it's just distracting to think about whether Yahweh counts as a god or not. The interesting part is what he can do, what his deal is, what he looks like; even what's his favourite snack is more interesting.
I've less and less to say about free will. I don't really understand the question, on some level. On another level, I think there just isn't much to the question. There are at least two variables that sometimes do and sometimes don't work to constrain a will. Any given will may or may not face external constraints against its fulfillment. And the initial formation or ongoing revision of a will may or may not be constrained from taking certain shapes, by the complex of motivating factors.
Also germane to this discussion is the concept of "evil". I'd argue that concept of evil only makes sense in the context of a specific religion (possibly even a specific deity). The classic example is murder, but clearly there have been religions where killing your god's enemies was seen as desirable and virtuous.
It's possible to hold the belief that murder is morally undesirable outside the context of religion based on the fact that it's seen as a usually seen as a tragic loss, but that's a question of social values. "Evil" is a handy shorthand for this belief, but I'm sure most humanists, if pressed, would admit that criterion for evil are anything but absolute. I think we hold onto the word "evil" because it means we don't have to explore too deeply the whys and wherefores of Hitler/child rapists/hedge fund managers/etc.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Define free will. Contrast it with not having free will.
Ok, so never ask a question for which you don't have the answer. The name "free will" is something of a misnomer, but the question is "Free from what?"
As I will show:
A there is only one coherent conception of free will - a determinist/compatibalist one
This serves absolutely no use for theodicy
So, there are two ways in which we use "free will" and if we should seek to preserve the meanings of as they are useful and informative distinctions without which we would need to entirely revise very large portions of our knowledge and completely re-evaluate every day experience. The best way to start is to declare what free will is not
We note that an automaton does not have free will - rather its actions are determined by the nature of its mechanism, this gear turns this wheel, which lifts this lever which unwinds this spring to move its arm like so. It is limited in the actions it can perform, it cannot change its actions to fit an arbitrary environment.
To act of one's own free will is to act without duress - in that we are not acting of our own free will if we are compelled at gunpoint, or under significantly injurious blackmail.
Clearly, the primary factor to consider is the first. But what is it about the robot that separates it from us? It cannot be the deterministic mode of its operation - after all, our brains fire neurons which connect to other neurons that are formed into nerves that connect to muscles to pull the levers that are our arms and legs. Is it then the fact that our brains produce a conscious experience and we have the feeling of choosing? That cannot be it either - firstly, because our brains appear to be to be mere products of chemistry and perhaps, quantum effects*, which neuron fires when appears to be simply a matter of how physical forces play out, brain monitoring appears to show that our conscious experience is more or less "along for the ride" the lower levels of the brain make the decisions and start the action before our consciousness realises. But the second, deeper and subtler issue is that even if we were to posit that the conscious mind was somehow separate from our physical bodies that doesn't solve our problem - clearly there are properties of the mind that cause it to produce decision A rather than decision B. There's no way to get away from that.
Souls don't help - what then is a soul? A static, unchanging non-coporeal thing that determines our true natures and thus determines how our mind will act and respond? Determined, free then from what? Straight back the dilemma. A consciousness disembodied? We just run straight back into the same issue. Does nothing to avoid the dilemma, just makes the basis for what determines things soul stuff rather than chemical fizzings A fundamental essence? I don't even know what that means and an addition of "mystery" doesn't solve the in principle dilemma.
Quantum effects? The random nature of quantum effects could provide random inputs into our deterministic brains. But that doesn't help, random inputs don't solve the issue. Perhaps our whole brain acts on quantum effects and the whole thing is random? Same issue as before, our actions being determined by random quantum fizzing or random quantum fizzing interfering with chemical fizzing doesn't solve the dilemma, it's still just the result of a bunch of physical forces and matter interacting in a rule based way. So, what then if quantum effects are actually somehow conscious or matter is at base idealist figments interacting? We still run into the same issues - the macro scale effects still appear determined, if we view consciousness separately then it is still the product of its properties and nature (and frankly the solution is circular).
Fundamentally we have an infinite regression no matter what model of the mind we take - I chose peanut butter ice cream because I like peanut butter ice cream. I like peanut butter ice cream because of how my brain is wired - a physical fact not under the control of my conscious mind. I like ice cream because my soul makes me like peanut butter ice cream. Why is my brain wired that way? What makes my soul a peanut butter ice cream soul and not a chunky monkey soul? What is it about the quantum consciousness of the universe that makes me a peanut butter choosing quantum effect. No matter what we might propose this pattern cannot be escaped, we either have some static antecedent or randomness.
So, what then is the solution? Rather free will must refer to capacity of our ability to behave- it is always going to be influened by our own preferences and internal mental states, the fundamental wiring of our brain and deterministic and random forces. But, we potentially have an entirely dynamic range of possible behaviours we can adapt to the environment. We have a potentially infinite number of possible behaviours under ideal conditions because we are not machines that operate purely on mechanical complexity and work but we are self-referential and we operate on information and intentional content. Our free will is exactly that - we an behave in informed and changing ways - we aren't the automaton, our behaviour is much more dynamically context independent. In idealised we have an infinite number of behaviours - consider the generative properties of languages, if we had the time and memory we could engage in producing an infinitely long sentence due to the fact that we can simply keep using the conjunction 'and', it might not be a very interesting sentence but it would be comprehensible and a similarly ideal human interlocutor could listen, understand and respond to the sentence.
This fits very nicely with our other, legal and folk-psychological sense of free will (despite the fact that what is a sufficient amount of duress is largely determined by the cultural context - e.g. it is normal to need to work to eat so we don't usually consider that we work not of our own free will) - we still can maintain our understanding of the world and interactions with people. Determinism does not imply being forced or compelled - we are simply the products of the things that determine our behaviour - we can no more be forced by our neurons to do X because we are the arrangement an firing of our neurons. We aren't forced by our soul (if that is your preferred solution) to do Y because we are our soul. We aren't forced by our quantum fizzing to do Z because we are the fizzing of the quantums.
'Free will' defined: What we are free from is mechanical constraint because the work we do is computational/informational not mechanical
Clearly, this in no way provides an escape hatch for the theodicy. It doesn't matter whether we are wired to like the good - like charity, kindness, respect, non-violence - or like the bad - like hate, and sadism and the pain of others, they're the same thing from the perspective of free will, just one produces misery and the other does not. There is no "default" state for us to be in - we are whatever the things that determine us are, whether that is neurological wiring, the vices and virtues of our soul, the particular set of quantum permutations. It is simply a matter of the creator deity creating one configuration and set of circumstances over another, regardless of how that configuration is chosen. We are no free-er because we aren't in configurations that automatically understand god and eschew evil than if we did all inherently understand god and eschew evil - we are just as fixed in our preferences for sin and vice as we would be for piety and virtue.
So, no matter how you want to slice it, "free will" does nothing to eliminate the problem of evil, it does no work, it carries no water. It is simply entirely irrelevant.
*quantum theories of consciousness are very terrible
Man, I don't believe in God and I'm not sure free will exists.
Free will is just a social construct like "rights" or "purpose". It's a way for us to make sense of things. Ultimately everything is made of matter, which behaves in predictable ways. Randomness is an illusion created by the volume of matter interactions.
Edit: God damn, Apothe0sis beat me by every possible metric
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Man, I don't believe in God and I'm not sure free will exists.
Free will is just a social construct like "rights" or "purpose". It's a way for us to make sense of things. Ultimately everything is made of matter, which behaves in predictable ways. Randomness is an illusion created by the volume of matter interactions.
Well, I think that is a partial answer to free will.
But the physics certainly seems to suggest that randomness is a very real phenomenon on the quantum scale and thus within the universe.
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AlazullYour body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.Enjoy the ride.Registered Userregular
I've always thought of free will as the concept that though we were supposedly created by this omnipotent, omniscient being we can still do whatever we want in our lives. If we really were created by something and didn't have free will, we would do exactly as that thing commands us.
I guess the idea is that you can choose to do good in your life, you're not forced to. But a lot of it is the hand wave on why evil exists if we supposedly have something out there that really cares that much about what we do. Also, its interesting that the guy who is in charge of punishing people who do evil is the same one who rebelled because he was created without free will.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Forced to, by what?
As I have shown we are 'forced to' act a particular way based upon whether the deity chooses to make us like THIS or like THAT.
Or, alternatively that it doesn't matter how we are made we aren't forced to do anything. Just depends on how you look at it.
Man, I don't believe in God and I'm not sure free will exists.
Free will is just a social construct like "rights" or "purpose". It's a way for us to make sense of things. Ultimately everything is made of matter, which behaves in predictable ways. Randomness is an illusion created by the volume of matter interactions.
Well, I think that is a partial answer to free will.
But the physics certainly seems to suggest that randomness is a very real phenomenon on the quantum scale and thus within the universe.
Also, stating free will is at odds with a deterministic universe and that free will is therefore an illusion is a logical fallacy, since you end up with a circular argument: the universe is deterministic because free will is an illusion because the universe is deterministic.
The entirety of science holds up whether free will exists or not, since all laws imply "given no other forces" or the like.
Free will is untestable.
As to the existence of the soul? Cogito ergo sum. The self is the soul, problem solved. Actually, I'm pretty sure sentience is indistinguishible from a good program, hence the Turing test.
So god is untestable, agency is untestable, and the existence of the soul is untestable...
Except for the case where I know I exist. This leads me to infer others also have a self... and so I can infer that for at least one meaning souls exist. Not that this helps with the other two.
And of course, Goedel's theorems apply to the universe, so it's possible those other two are in that category (that of course is itself unprovable, as showing something is under incompleteness is a proof that it is true and thus not under incompleteness).
Free will is one of those things that feels great but doesn't make any sense as concept.
You make your choices based on stuff. If that stuff changes, so do your choices. Your decisions are made of meat, and changing that meat changes your decisions. We have shown this to be the case with brain surgery and injury. A person's will can be modified.
If a deity made everything, then that deity made it work that way.
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AlazullYour body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.Enjoy the ride.Registered Userregular
As I have shown we are 'forced to' act a particular way based upon whether the deity chooses to make us like THIS or like THAT.
Or, alternatively that it doesn't matter how we are made we aren't forced to do anything. Just depends on how you look at it.
By literally not having free will. We would not be able to do anything considered sinful or forbidden by our creator if we didn't have it, or at least that's the argument made from everything I heard and read growing up. That's the whole thing, the concept of free will is that you are choosing to live your life in the way you are. This is why you see religious folks that are okay with persecuting people they see as sinful and usually try to "educate" them on their sinful behavior, because hey now you know you are choosing to do sin so you'll stop so you don't go to Hell.
I'm going to make it clear that I'm an atheist myself, but I was trying to clear up what free will might mean when we use it as a theological concept. It does have meaning, its just that that meaning is very wishy-washy. I grew up Southern Baptist so stuff like this got discussed a lot and we had to do a lot of Bible reading with the idea of illustrating the concept from the passages, with a pastor heavily guiding us.
EDIT: In reference to my first paragraph, I think that's why you see a lot of religious protesters that have signs with Biblical passage numbers on them. They are expecting the people that they are protesting to go and read the passage, realize that this is "the literal word of God" as they seem to believe, and "get right by Him." This is also why you see a big argument for homosexual rights being that they are born that way while the detractors (especially religious folk) try to say they choose to be gay, because they want to make it clear that you're using your free will to do something sinful so you're going to Hell. If you were created that way, that would imply to them that God made you gay so being gay inherently can't be sinful because it is outside the scope of free will.
Let's all acknowledge it doesn't make much sense, but that it is a religious concept. One that most likely began to be explained when some layman asked, "Well, why are we able to do things that are sinful if they are abhorrent in the eyes of our Creator?"
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User name Alazull on Steam, PSN, Nintenders, Epic, etc.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
As usual, the problem is omni. If a deity is mostly good, but with a brutal dark side, then all is well. When they are goodness itself, being monstrous on occasion is an issue.
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
Well this is related to a question I've never seen a satisfactory answer to, either.
The basic gist of the free will argument is that, while God could just make beings that aren't capable of making decisions God doesn't like, it's somehow less meaningful than a situation where only some people choose that way.
However, there's always a balance of probabilities concerning what people are going to choose. If you give 100 people a choice between eating their favourite candy bar or eating a dog turd, I'm pretty confident that the number choosing the dog turd is going to be pretty low. Nonetheless, there's nothing about this scenario that negates the argument that these people all had a free choice between the two.
Now if there are a bunch of things God really, really doesn't want us to do, why aren't those things closer to the "eating a dog turd" level of desirability, rather the opposite? Couple this with the fact that, if we accept that humans are a specifies that evolved, many of the things that God doesn't like are actually advantageous behaviour from an evolutionary perspective, although they are less desirable in a relatively small, pastoral, human society.
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AlazullYour body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.Enjoy the ride.Registered Userregular
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.
Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.
The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Free will is essentially the gypsy's curse or slenderman summons. The more you talk about it the more horrible it gets.
Eventually free will appears to you outside your window, beckoning with it's engorged, rotting hand to come outside. And you of course run and hide.
In a universe with or without god(s), an answer that states free will exists seems like it boils down to it being turtles all of the way down. However, I think that in a universe with or without god(s), there is an argument to be made that the universe is not deterministic. That's not the same thing as free will - it's a little like "roll 1d6, if 1-3 do A, if 4-5 do B, if 6 do C" - but if you squint really hard they look sort of similar from a distance.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.
Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.
The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.
1) Angels are fundamentally unable to go against the will of God
2) Lucifer rebels
These two statements seem at odds. It goes into paradox territory if you try to assert that "it was god's will that Lucifer went against god's will".
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.
Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.
The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.
1) Angels are fundamentally unable to go against the will of God
2) Lucifer rebels
These two statements seem at odds. It goes into paradox territory if you try to assert that "it was god's will that Lucifer went against god's will".
Which is why the only interpretation of the Christian Satan that makes sense is the one in the Bible - he exists because God is an asshole, and everything he does is at God's behest. Satan can chill with God while they talk about Job, gets a free pass to try to tempt Jesus, and is generally allowed to do his own thing. Sure, Dante and Milton and others make Satan into the bad guy, but that's on them. The Biblical Satan's role in the Bible is no more dark than the role of the other angels - it wasn't Satan noted as killing the first born of Egypt or drowning the world.
Aside from Revelations of course, but that's it's own special coded message to the Christians about the Roman Empire case.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.
Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.
Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.
The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.
1) Angels are fundamentally unable to go against the will of God
2) Lucifer rebels
These two statements seem at odds. It goes into paradox territory if you try to assert that "it was god's will that Lucifer went against god's will".
Not only that, but the act of creating that situation, and its subsequent punishment, supports an interpretation of god with questionable morals.
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God is omnibenificent. . .
This does considerable violence to epistemology (as well as common use, the layman is much more likely to view agnosticism as the middle way/position of doubt/uncertainty. Which is also the interpretation used by the philosophical literature, by and large.).
Basically, the idea that "knowing" requires an impossibility of being incorrect, or even "perfect certainty". We claim to know things about the universe based upon parsimony, plausibility, elegance, modesty etc... the question of deities is no different.
We know there is no god. We know that the imaginary friend about which I spoke as a child (Anty, an invisible but anthropomorphic ant that often hung out in my ear) does not exist.
I get this is how reason works but I don't think this is how humans work. Plus I've read Hume and who knows...maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow and maybe reason ain't reasonable (which would totally suck).
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
What, all of you?
Well then!
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
Chapter 1: Faith in Exile, Pages 11-12:
Well, let's start with 'these are the facts'. Which facts, belonging to which event? Harris provides two sources for this story, and neither of them point to a specific example of a suicide bombing. It's somewhat reminiscent of the bus scene from the film The Siege.
If a bomber is using rat poison and a lot of shrapnel, that far more fits the MO of an American fascist bomber (albeit those are rarely suicide bombers) than a Muslim, whom Harris is basically daring the reader to indict on his behalf (Jihadists tend to use specific bomb recipes known for their efficacy; these rarely include the use of toxins, which are known to gum-up explosive powers and lower blaster yields or even cause a bomb to fail entirely).
The line about parents gleefully hearing about their son's martyrdom is and having a celebratory BBQ is just wholesale bullshit.
And, of course, we do see one of Harris's most prominent MOs here - his insistence that every Jihadist is a well educated engineer, doctor, etc, so that he can discount social pressures as a plausible cause for Wahhabi Jihadist violence. Mr. Harris derives this thought from work done by Dr. Marc Sageman, which reached the conclusion that about 62%~ of Jihadists had university degrees and either a middle class or upper middle class lifestyle (this includes, of course, the late Mr. Bin Laden).
But the conclusion Mr. Harris drew from that research is not what that research showed.
These are well educated, middle class people, yes - but they are often not religious radicals. They are political ideologues. The whole intent of the movement is to cultivate and maintain the idea of inseparable differences between the west and the Persian gulf, which (in their minds) will allow the Persian Gulf to find it's own destiny rather than be used as a pawn in perpetuity. It's not even a half-wrong thought process (though the method is clearly deplorable).
I feel that my characterization is fair within the context of the whole work, which goes into this quite a bit.
Well, perhaps (I don't quite remember it that way).
But it is explicitly the opposite of what the passage actually says.
This seems a bit unfair in the context of the thread since most probably haven't read more than your excerpt. It also seems like it might distract the thread from atheism in general to atheism in context of specific religions (which I can imagine getting weird.)
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
It isn't, because this isn't the assumption here. In context, there are only two valid outcomes:
-death with no afterlife
-being tortured for all eternity
By believing in 3 you have to also rationally believe in 1. By believing in 1 your odds are far more likely to be tortured in hell for all eternity as there is no way to know god's will within context. The only (only) constant in the bible is that the devil is there and will tempt you. The odds of a good, all powerful, and benevolent Christian deity controlling all things are essentially 0% given the prevalence of and success of "evil" men, especially within the church that controls the word of god itself. Either the Christian god isn't a god at all or isn't benevolent given the amount of terrible things that happen to his followers on this earth.
This goes back to the Problem of Evil:
There are only two likely outcomes here. Either there is a god and it is malevolent, or there are not gods.
But what about free will? By the nature of existence and history over time, free will leads to far more negative outcomes than positive, including horrific wars, torture, persecution, rape, murder, essentially everything out there that can go wrong. Free will is not something a caring and benevolent god would use without counteracting as it creates more evil than good. An omnibenevolent god would intervene (if it existed) to guide those with free will into choices of actions to prevent atrocities, rather than letting atrocities occur. If anything, free will is an argument for the existence of a malevolent god as it is the dogmatic direct cause of evil actions on earth. A benevolent god could have made positive actions easier or more karmicly rewarding to the faithful, but this is not the case in reality without assumption of a reward after death. Given that we cannot see that reward, nor prove that reward, nor see any likelihood that such a reward exists in any way shape or form it becomes essentially an empty promise as there is no reason that there shouldn't be confirmation of an afterlife in an existence in which a benevolent god actually exists. By leaving uncertainty, that actually creates more evil in the world as people fight over the nature of heaven and how best to get there, actively creating more evil through ambiguity.
Pascal's Wager is entirely about confirmation bias, you believe in something you want to believe, not in something with actual mathematical or logical certitude. And that's fine! Faith has a lot of roles and isn't something people shouldn't have or act by, there are a lot of good things within Christian dogma and the community.
But it isn't a logical outcome and we shouldn't try and pretend it is.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Assuming human action is free of will, human action over time has created pretty much all of our horrors we've faced from war to petty crime. In the name of god more wars have been fought than over any other concept, which a benevolent god would interdict to prevent as his actions of revealing himself in the first place caused these conflicts. In such a situation the only positive action a god could take in a free will scenario is never revealing itself to exist in the first place, as if it were all knowing it would anticipate everything done in the face of religious conflict over the last 3000 years. Essentially, by introducing the idea of god to man a god would have created the majority of evil actions over time.
Wait.
Wait.
Define free will. Contrast it with not having free will.
No, you're assuming your conclusion as a premise.
Free will also leads to goods. You have offered no reasoning why the evils outweigh these, or why that is the framework by which god judges it.
This is why I keep saying you have to start by nailing down what is good. You can't make meaningful conclusions like this otherwise.
Another question: Assume god acts for a reason. What reason is there to create a perfect universe, where everything always ends happily and no actions ever matter? Is such a universe compatiple with free will if the outcome of all actions are the same?
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You can turn that around, though; pretty much all the good we've faced stems from free will, if there is such a thing. Saying that more bad than good has followed is a very strong assertion and needs strong evidence too.
On the question of benevolence and evil in the world: what is deemed good or evil from our perspective needn't necessarily be so from another perspective. There are many things that seem to us the best or worst thing ever as we experience them, yet later we see them as mere bumps. If there is a god and if there are other planes of existence (e.g. the afterlife, Paradise, Nirvana), I can imagine (which isn't the same as saying I believe it) that what seems horrific and evil to us in this life may not in another. Even if that were true, though, I don't think it justifies a laissez-faire attitude to war, torture, persecution, rape, murder etc. while we're here, but it's still the reason why I don't find the Problem of Evil argument particularly convincing. It says "If there is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God..." without considering that Evil may look different from such a god's perspective.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
To be a devil's advocate...
I would contend that saying Religions have especially caused more wars than any other thing is not completely true. It is perhaps an aggravating cause, or something used to justify acts ex post facto, but I don't agree that its the igniting cause most of the time. Fighting in the name of god I would even argue is something that is inevitable when speaking about the pre-modern era. People conceptualized the entire world in a very different way than our modern way of thinking. God was involved in all aspects of the world and was inseparable from it, and I would argue that that is different from someone saying 'we must kill them because they are not our religion'. I think monotheistic religion is most guilty of giving humanity an extremely potent source of 'othering' other humans. But I think this religion as the root of all wars sort of thing is an atheistic shibboleth that really misunderstands how pre-modern people experienced the world.
That's part of why I think that the "god"-like words have only little stable content outside of their own contexts. The most stable part of them when used outside of myths, in comparisons or meta-talk, is the expression of being impressed.
It's not a distinction always worth making. And there's not always a reason to treat them as a group with collective validity or whatever. An argument about general "gods" is about a lot of things. A lot of shapes to push into a square hole at the same time.
But where did the lighter fluid come from?
Looking at this through the lens of Pascal's Wager, the only way evil can exist is from free will, therefore it would be by default. Assuming an all powerful god with omnibenevolent ends that created the universe, enabling the existence of evil actions through free will would be the only way to introduce evil into said universe. An omnibenevolent god would not do such as it would cause it's creation's suffering. Or it is not omnibenevolent. If it is not omnibenevolent, why assume by default that a heaven awaits you or that you can somehow know what mortal actions will get you there. Such a conjecture would be meaningless as there is no way to know.
Edit: There is also the assumption that an omnipowerful and omnibelevolent god could not come up with a universe in which both free will and universally positive, but different, outcomes which is flawed as then such a god would not be omnipowerful.
There could be any number of reasons, most likely unknowable by mortal minds in religious contexts. Pascal's Wager assumes that there is one, single path that makes you good in God's eyes and therefore the safe bet is to follow it, but assuming free will and a universe created in which free will can lead to evil actions there is not more reason to assume that following the assumed god's path will make you blessed and to an afterlife than being a horrible, mass murderer as there is no way to verify and, but the existence of such options, it is clear that the diety either does not view evil in the same terms as the written scripture of Christian dogma (which is what Pascal's Wager is based on), or if it does follow those rules there is such evidence of tampering with the text that passes along those beliefs (along with such splits and variations in them both in the current texts and over time), that there is no way to know which path among the contradictions is accurate. Given that the assumption of living a non-proper life is hell or purgatory, the odds of ending up in either are significantly higher than following any single path (and as they are almost all exclusionary between Abrahamic faiths, the odds are even less if you try and follow a hybrid).
If evil is not as defined in the Christian bible, Pascal's Wager is even more meaningless as Heaven might as a reward might just as well be Hell from our perspective.
Again, let's not conflate existence or need for faith, religion, or gods as a whole with what I'm talking about here. I personally do have faith and am not an atheist. This is a discussion of the inanity of Pascal's Wager in context of how it is framed, not religion/faith/spiritualism/whatever as a whole. This is also not an argument to do whatever you want and murder folk because statistically speaking whatever. Only that the assumption that you have a "safe bet" in following a specific faith is silly and by it's own context deeply flawed.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
If that involves some incense, traditional movements/rituals, calling upon ancestral spirits, or any number of other things good on ya. Or not! Either is good and groovy.
I've less and less to say about free will. I don't really understand the question, on some level. On another level, I think there just isn't much to the question. There are at least two variables that sometimes do and sometimes don't work to constrain a will. Any given will may or may not face external constraints against its fulfillment. And the initial formation or ongoing revision of a will may or may not be constrained from taking certain shapes, by the complex of motivating factors.
It's possible to hold the belief that murder is morally undesirable outside the context of religion based on the fact that it's seen as a usually seen as a tragic loss, but that's a question of social values. "Evil" is a handy shorthand for this belief, but I'm sure most humanists, if pressed, would admit that criterion for evil are anything but absolute. I think we hold onto the word "evil" because it means we don't have to explore too deeply the whys and wherefores of Hitler/child rapists/hedge fund managers/etc.
Ok, so never ask a question for which you don't have the answer. The name "free will" is something of a misnomer, but the question is "Free from what?"
As I will show:
So, there are two ways in which we use "free will" and if we should seek to preserve the meanings of as they are useful and informative distinctions without which we would need to entirely revise very large portions of our knowledge and completely re-evaluate every day experience. The best way to start is to declare what free will is not
Clearly, the primary factor to consider is the first. But what is it about the robot that separates it from us? It cannot be the deterministic mode of its operation - after all, our brains fire neurons which connect to other neurons that are formed into nerves that connect to muscles to pull the levers that are our arms and legs. Is it then the fact that our brains produce a conscious experience and we have the feeling of choosing? That cannot be it either - firstly, because our brains appear to be to be mere products of chemistry and perhaps, quantum effects*, which neuron fires when appears to be simply a matter of how physical forces play out, brain monitoring appears to show that our conscious experience is more or less "along for the ride" the lower levels of the brain make the decisions and start the action before our consciousness realises. But the second, deeper and subtler issue is that even if we were to posit that the conscious mind was somehow separate from our physical bodies that doesn't solve our problem - clearly there are properties of the mind that cause it to produce decision A rather than decision B. There's no way to get away from that.
Souls don't help - what then is a soul? A static, unchanging non-coporeal thing that determines our true natures and thus determines how our mind will act and respond? Determined, free then from what? Straight back the dilemma. A consciousness disembodied? We just run straight back into the same issue. Does nothing to avoid the dilemma, just makes the basis for what determines things soul stuff rather than chemical fizzings A fundamental essence? I don't even know what that means and an addition of "mystery" doesn't solve the in principle dilemma.
Quantum effects? The random nature of quantum effects could provide random inputs into our deterministic brains. But that doesn't help, random inputs don't solve the issue. Perhaps our whole brain acts on quantum effects and the whole thing is random? Same issue as before, our actions being determined by random quantum fizzing or random quantum fizzing interfering with chemical fizzing doesn't solve the dilemma, it's still just the result of a bunch of physical forces and matter interacting in a rule based way. So, what then if quantum effects are actually somehow conscious or matter is at base idealist figments interacting? We still run into the same issues - the macro scale effects still appear determined, if we view consciousness separately then it is still the product of its properties and nature (and frankly the solution is circular).
Fundamentally we have an infinite regression no matter what model of the mind we take - I chose peanut butter ice cream because I like peanut butter ice cream. I like peanut butter ice cream because of how my brain is wired - a physical fact not under the control of my conscious mind. I like ice cream because my soul makes me like peanut butter ice cream. Why is my brain wired that way? What makes my soul a peanut butter ice cream soul and not a chunky monkey soul? What is it about the quantum consciousness of the universe that makes me a peanut butter choosing quantum effect. No matter what we might propose this pattern cannot be escaped, we either have some static antecedent or randomness.
So, what then is the solution? Rather free will must refer to capacity of our ability to behave- it is always going to be influened by our own preferences and internal mental states, the fundamental wiring of our brain and deterministic and random forces. But, we potentially have an entirely dynamic range of possible behaviours we can adapt to the environment. We have a potentially infinite number of possible behaviours under ideal conditions because we are not machines that operate purely on mechanical complexity and work but we are self-referential and we operate on information and intentional content. Our free will is exactly that - we an behave in informed and changing ways - we aren't the automaton, our behaviour is much more dynamically context independent. In idealised we have an infinite number of behaviours - consider the generative properties of languages, if we had the time and memory we could engage in producing an infinitely long sentence due to the fact that we can simply keep using the conjunction 'and', it might not be a very interesting sentence but it would be comprehensible and a similarly ideal human interlocutor could listen, understand and respond to the sentence.
This fits very nicely with our other, legal and folk-psychological sense of free will (despite the fact that what is a sufficient amount of duress is largely determined by the cultural context - e.g. it is normal to need to work to eat so we don't usually consider that we work not of our own free will) - we still can maintain our understanding of the world and interactions with people. Determinism does not imply being forced or compelled - we are simply the products of the things that determine our behaviour - we can no more be forced by our neurons to do X because we are the arrangement an firing of our neurons. We aren't forced by our soul (if that is your preferred solution) to do Y because we are our soul. We aren't forced by our quantum fizzing to do Z because we are the fizzing of the quantums.
'Free will' defined: What we are free from is mechanical constraint because the work we do is computational/informational not mechanical
Clearly, this in no way provides an escape hatch for the theodicy. It doesn't matter whether we are wired to like the good - like charity, kindness, respect, non-violence - or like the bad - like hate, and sadism and the pain of others, they're the same thing from the perspective of free will, just one produces misery and the other does not. There is no "default" state for us to be in - we are whatever the things that determine us are, whether that is neurological wiring, the vices and virtues of our soul, the particular set of quantum permutations. It is simply a matter of the creator deity creating one configuration and set of circumstances over another, regardless of how that configuration is chosen. We are no free-er because we aren't in configurations that automatically understand god and eschew evil than if we did all inherently understand god and eschew evil - we are just as fixed in our preferences for sin and vice as we would be for piety and virtue.
So, no matter how you want to slice it, "free will" does nothing to eliminate the problem of evil, it does no work, it carries no water. It is simply entirely irrelevant.
*quantum theories of consciousness are very terrible
Free will is just a social construct like "rights" or "purpose". It's a way for us to make sense of things. Ultimately everything is made of matter, which behaves in predictable ways. Randomness is an illusion created by the volume of matter interactions.
Edit: God damn, Apothe0sis beat me by every possible metric
But the physics certainly seems to suggest that randomness is a very real phenomenon on the quantum scale and thus within the universe.
I guess the idea is that you can choose to do good in your life, you're not forced to. But a lot of it is the hand wave on why evil exists if we supposedly have something out there that really cares that much about what we do. Also, its interesting that the guy who is in charge of punishing people who do evil is the same one who rebelled because he was created without free will.
As I have shown we are 'forced to' act a particular way based upon whether the deity chooses to make us like THIS or like THAT.
Or, alternatively that it doesn't matter how we are made we aren't forced to do anything. Just depends on how you look at it.
Also, stating free will is at odds with a deterministic universe and that free will is therefore an illusion is a logical fallacy, since you end up with a circular argument: the universe is deterministic because free will is an illusion because the universe is deterministic.
The entirety of science holds up whether free will exists or not, since all laws imply "given no other forces" or the like.
Free will is untestable.
As to the existence of the soul? Cogito ergo sum. The self is the soul, problem solved. Actually, I'm pretty sure sentience is indistinguishible from a good program, hence the Turing test.
So god is untestable, agency is untestable, and the existence of the soul is untestable...
Except for the case where I know I exist. This leads me to infer others also have a self... and so I can infer that for at least one meaning souls exist. Not that this helps with the other two.
And of course, Goedel's theorems apply to the universe, so it's possible those other two are in that category (that of course is itself unprovable, as showing something is under incompleteness is a proof that it is true and thus not under incompleteness).
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You make your choices based on stuff. If that stuff changes, so do your choices. Your decisions are made of meat, and changing that meat changes your decisions. We have shown this to be the case with brain surgery and injury. A person's will can be modified.
If a deity made everything, then that deity made it work that way.
By literally not having free will. We would not be able to do anything considered sinful or forbidden by our creator if we didn't have it, or at least that's the argument made from everything I heard and read growing up. That's the whole thing, the concept of free will is that you are choosing to live your life in the way you are. This is why you see religious folks that are okay with persecuting people they see as sinful and usually try to "educate" them on their sinful behavior, because hey now you know you are choosing to do sin so you'll stop so you don't go to Hell.
I'm going to make it clear that I'm an atheist myself, but I was trying to clear up what free will might mean when we use it as a theological concept. It does have meaning, its just that that meaning is very wishy-washy. I grew up Southern Baptist so stuff like this got discussed a lot and we had to do a lot of Bible reading with the idea of illustrating the concept from the passages, with a pastor heavily guiding us.
EDIT: In reference to my first paragraph, I think that's why you see a lot of religious protesters that have signs with Biblical passage numbers on them. They are expecting the people that they are protesting to go and read the passage, realize that this is "the literal word of God" as they seem to believe, and "get right by Him." This is also why you see a big argument for homosexual rights being that they are born that way while the detractors (especially religious folk) try to say they choose to be gay, because they want to make it clear that you're using your free will to do something sinful so you're going to Hell. If you were created that way, that would imply to them that God made you gay so being gay inherently can't be sinful because it is outside the scope of free will.
Let's all acknowledge it doesn't make much sense, but that it is a religious concept. One that most likely began to be explained when some layman asked, "Well, why are we able to do things that are sinful if they are abhorrent in the eyes of our Creator?"
Well this is related to a question I've never seen a satisfactory answer to, either.
The basic gist of the free will argument is that, while God could just make beings that aren't capable of making decisions God doesn't like, it's somehow less meaningful than a situation where only some people choose that way.
However, there's always a balance of probabilities concerning what people are going to choose. If you give 100 people a choice between eating their favourite candy bar or eating a dog turd, I'm pretty confident that the number choosing the dog turd is going to be pretty low. Nonetheless, there's nothing about this scenario that negates the argument that these people all had a free choice between the two.
Now if there are a bunch of things God really, really doesn't want us to do, why aren't those things closer to the "eating a dog turd" level of desirability, rather the opposite? Couple this with the fact that, if we accept that humans are a specifies that evolved, many of the things that God doesn't like are actually advantageous behaviour from an evolutionary perspective, although they are less desirable in a relatively small, pastoral, human society.
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Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.
Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.
The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.
Eventually free will appears to you outside your window, beckoning with it's engorged, rotting hand to come outside. And you of course run and hide.
Which is exactly what it forced you to do.
Or did it?
Wait I think
OH GOD ITS BEHIND ME RUN FOR YOUR L
In a universe with or without god(s), an answer that states free will exists seems like it boils down to it being turtles all of the way down. However, I think that in a universe with or without god(s), there is an argument to be made that the universe is not deterministic. That's not the same thing as free will - it's a little like "roll 1d6, if 1-3 do A, if 4-5 do B, if 6 do C" - but if you squint really hard they look sort of similar from a distance.
1) Angels are fundamentally unable to go against the will of God
2) Lucifer rebels
These two statements seem at odds. It goes into paradox territory if you try to assert that "it was god's will that Lucifer went against god's will".
Which is why the only interpretation of the Christian Satan that makes sense is the one in the Bible - he exists because God is an asshole, and everything he does is at God's behest. Satan can chill with God while they talk about Job, gets a free pass to try to tempt Jesus, and is generally allowed to do his own thing. Sure, Dante and Milton and others make Satan into the bad guy, but that's on them. The Biblical Satan's role in the Bible is no more dark than the role of the other angels - it wasn't Satan noted as killing the first born of Egypt or drowning the world.
Aside from Revelations of course, but that's it's own special coded message to the Christians about the Roman Empire case.
Not only that, but the act of creating that situation, and its subsequent punishment, supports an interpretation of god with questionable morals.